Rememberment, Chapter III: Lord of the Jungle

All in all I was a happy kid. 

Sure, the house wasn't much and had some issues. Our water came from our own well and often tasted funny, and our heating boiler used peat pellets for fuel which made the whole place smell a certain way. The house was surrounded by trees so lightning storms were particularly exciting.

And sure, every now and then something made me sad for a while (such as losing another pet to the Road of Death, this time our cat) or having to listen to the adults having an argument over something (that something most often being the building project that had emerged on our property - my oldest brother was starting his own furniture workshop). 

Overall it wasn't all that bad though. Besides, we soon got a new dog. It also wasn't exactly a rare incident for someone's cat to be carrying kittens, so I got a new one of those as well. 


"Welcome to the family, Sir Roadkill the Third".


Besides my usual hobbies of drawing and reading, I spent a lot of time with my next door friend. We were both fascinated by the nature around us, especially by all the various kinds of butterflies, insects and bugs we could find. 
One of our favourite locations was a pond between the forest and the surrounding fields. It was magical in the summer, teeming with damselflies, diving bell spiders, water scorpions, caddisflies and numerous other wonderful creatures. We used to collect the larvae of dytiscus beetles there and pretend they were some kind of ancient monsters, as we fed them tadpoles and earthworms.

 
Sorry, did I say "pretend"? I meant "recognized".


The rest of the family didn't mind living close to nature, either. My dad enjoyed taking little walks in the woods, Mom liked to collect berries in autumn and my brothers were all into hunting and fishing. 

During winter there wasn't quite as much fun to be had outside, so I spent more time with my art projects and comics. Dad would often remind me that I should study God's Word more, but he did have his own favourites among the "fairy tales and lies" department as well - I would often sit on his lap and read stories of The Phantom or Tarzan with him. 

And if there was a Tarzan movie on TV we all watched it - even the first movie I ever went to see in our local cinema was "Tarzan Finds a Son" starring the legendary Johnny Weissmuller. Dad carved a bow, some wooden arrows and a beautiful wooden knife for me, so when I ran outside wearing nothing but my underpants and yodled my lungs out, everyone knew who the King of Apes was in our neighbourhood.

School was about to start though, and I would find out that the other kids might not always respect my sovereignty.

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